Millville High School baseball player Aaron Cox (left) and former Millville standout Mike Trout pose with the No. 1 jersey that now belongs to Cox. / Submitted photo

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MILLVILLE — What started out as a friendly wager turned into quite the honor for Aaron Cox.

The Millville High School senior baseball player can be seen sporting a prestigious number on the diamond this season for the Thunderbolts — Mike Trout’s No. 1.

Cox, who was a freshman in 2009 when Trout capped his career at Millville by being chosen in the first round of the Major League Baseball draft by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, holds his own place in the Bolts’ baseball history.

Cox is a hard-throwing right-hander who pitched Millville to its first-ever Group IV South title last season in a 4-3 win over Lenape on June 3.

“I went and made a bet with (assistant) coach (Ken) Williams that if I went out and won the Group IV championship, he had to let me wear the No. 1 the next year,” Cox said, vividly recalling their conversation. “So, he was a man of his word and I’m wearing it this year.”

Williams had no problem living up to his end of the bargain after Cox pitched Millville to the biggest win in the program’s history.

“He came to me before the game and I told him if he gets the win, we’ll do it,” Williams said of Cox’s offer. “We were toying with the idea of what to do with the number, and it just worked out that we won a championship. He gave up a three-run homer in the first inning, but pitched great for six innings and found a way to keep us in the game until we found a way to win it.”

Millville head coach Roy Hallenbeck’s plan all along was to one day put Trout’s storied jersey number back into rotation on the varsity team — just not this soon.

The coach originally wanted to wait for the last class with a link to Trout to graduate before bringing back the number. He was willing to make an exception, however, if Millville won the Group IV South title last season.

“Whatever it took to get it done was fine with me,” Hallenbeck joked about the bet between Cox and Williams.

Now, the plan is to give the number to a senior each year.

“If you look at Aaron’s body of work, he was a four-year program guy and varsity player, so that’s where that’s going to come from down the road,” Hallenbeck said of awarding Trout’s jersey number to a Bolts player annually. “It will be based on someone’s body of work.”

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Trout made his major league debut with the Angels last season and currently plays at Triple-A Salt Lake. He concluded his high school career with a .457 batting average, 30 home runs, 118 runs batted in, 70 stolen bases and a 1.446 on-base-plus-slugging percentage. The 18 home runs Trout hit his senior year stands as a single-season state record.

Trout, who could not be reached for comment for this story, posed for a picture with Cox when he was given the number.

“He said, ‘Just try to be like me when you wear it,’” Cox said of his conversation with Trout. “Really, it’s an honor to wear it. Just look where he is now.”

As for the future of the number, Cox sees it as something that can only make Millville baseball better.

“That’s going to be something to look forward to, a definite booster,” Cox said of future players getting to wear Trout’s number. “Everyone is going to be fighting for it, and I think it’s going to make everyone work that much harder.”

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